More old school orcs

I painted these up for the Warhammer Quest game I showed you eralier but here they are:

Two Marauder miniatures' "Giant black orc" and a Citadel Black orc champion. 80's stuff.

A regular orc champion painted as a Black Orc (I need some for WHQ)

Good old Gobbla

Savage orc shaman

 I tried out the new Citadel effect paint, Nihilakh Oxide on the Black orc boss. The result was mixed. It can give you a nice oxidation effect but it takes some practise to use properly.

a game of Space Hulk

Here's the final game I played at this years' Kinkkucon. I hosted a game of Space Hulk third edition to two other players who shared the role of the Space Marines between them. Their mission was simply to move through the hulk with minimal casualties.

Opening setup. The Space Marines enter from the top center of the hulk and must move out through the corridor on the bottom center.

A Librarian leads the Marines into the hulk.

The Marines advance via three routes while the Genestealers launch initial, unsuccessful attacks.

The Genestealers make their first big push when the marines are at a junction and are gunned down.

The Thunder Hammer Marine faces overwhelming odds but is saved by the librarian's psychic powers.

On the Marines' right flank, the Lighting Claw Marine and the Assault Cannon Marine both defend against 'stealer attacks with great success.

Aided by clever placement of psychic barriers, the Marines reach the end of the hulk with zero losses!

Only the Thunder Hammer Marine acting as a rearguard fails to escape the Genestealers. A near flawless victory to the Marines!

The Marines performed way above expectations in this one. I launched wave after wave of attacks against them and very rarely got to roll for close combat. The marines just kept killing everything in their path. Oh well, they will still never, ever win the 1st edition CAT transport mission :)

Winter War Finnish LMG Squad

Here's the first figures I've painted of the Baker Company Winter War Kickstarter. It's a LMG squad which consists of 7 soldiers, including a NCO and a gunner carrying the Lahti-Saloranta pikakivääri (a light machine gun). You'll notice I've mistakenly painted all their hands bare even though I now think they're supposed to be wearing gloves. They're going to get some frostbites for sure!

I wanted to do some dirt on the soldiers' snow camos since they wouldn't stay snow white for long. I think I succeeded quite nicely with the Tamiya weathering master snow/soot/rust kit I have.

The weathering kit looks like something out of my wife's handbag but it does good work.

The Lahti-Saloranta LMG

 I succeeded quite well with the bases using baking soda and PVA for snow. I wanted to contrast the dirty snow camos with some fresh, virgin snow. The texture doesn't show well on the photos because of overexposure. I haven't applied varnish yet and I'm not sure how they'll look after that but we'll see.

I also added some stubble on some of the soldiers' chins. These guys didn't have much time to shave.

Some reference material.

As I'm writing this the temperature outside is -28 Celsius and falling. A warm night for the veterans of the Winter War.

Warhammer Quest campaign

We played Lair of the Orc Lord at Kinkkucon but unfortunately had time only for the first two deeps. The adventuring party is dispatched by dwarves into a dungeon crawling with orcs and goblins to reclaim a lost talisman..

Our adventurers: A barbarian, a bretonnian knight, a wizard and a warrior priest.

They start off easy with goblins..

..but the goblins bring bigger clubs!

They are ambushed by squigs and spider riders..

Slay an angry minotaur...

..and meet an orc shaman who runs away deeper into the dungeon.

Our adventurers enter the second level with confidence, but the danger grows!

They get stuck fighting an increasing number of orcs and Black orcs..

Fight across a chasm of fire..

And meet the shaman again! This time the orc summons a monstrous troll to fight our heroes! The appearance of several more greenskins in the middle of the fight make this a tough one, but the adventurers defeat the monsters and enter the third and final level. That's another story however, and we are yet to see it play out.

Progress on Project Mancave

Since my last update on Project Mancave, there has been significant progress. Let me show you what's up.

Previously we had finished digging the foundations and laid a fresh concrete floor. Now it's time to do the walls. As fitting as it would be to have a mancave with walls of solid stone, Finland has a tendency of getting very cold during the winter and having a bit of extra insulation is quite beneficial towards keeping warm. To this end, we decided to build inner walls in the mancave.

First, a wooden frame

Then a thick layer of insulating wool and a plastic sheet to block moisture

And finally some cheap plaster sheets for walls.

As you can see, the windows are covered with styrofoam. We didn't have the time or the money to put in new windows before next summer, so the styrofoam is there to keep the cold out. It's not like there's much sunlight to enjoy this time of year anyway.

After the walls were complete I gave them a couple coats of the cheapest acrylic white wall paint I could find. Suddenly the place was ready for furniture. The ceiling still needs work (and more lamps) but I can do that later. The cost of doing the walls is somewhere around 500 Euro.

I've accumulated quite a collection of old furniture from here and there. Stuff people were going to throw away but I salvaged. Therefore I was able to furnish the place with zero cost. Lots of shelves and cabinets as you can see:

 After those were in place it took my wife just a couple of seconds to start cashing in on those "once the workshop is ready I'll haul all this stuff from the house in there" promises I made. We'll see how long the storage space holds.

Complete with a lounging area!

..and a cat entrance.

There's still much to add and do, but now the space is complete enough for me to start doing some projects in. The space which was once a stables, but has now become a workshop is kept above zero by a small radiator, and the temperature there is about 4 Celsius. When I need to work there, I can use a hot air blower to make the place above 12 Celsius. It's comfortable enough. There's a workbench to add as well as some accessories no workshop can do without (like a tool hanger on the wall) but I think I'm pretty much done for the winter.

Heating solution

ASL Pegasus Bridge scenario 1 and campaign start

I had the opportunity to play some ASL at this year's Kinkkucon. The scenario was PB1 from the Pegasus Bridge Historical Module. The module has scenarios and a campaign detailing the glider landing near the Caen canal bridge and the fighting that ensues. If you are unfamiliar on this famous D-Day action, check it out at Wikipedia.

The scenario we played starts at the very beginning. British troops land near the bridge on gliders and proceed to take the bridge from the poor-quality German troops guarding it under the cover of darkness. This was the first time we have used the glider landing rules, but more importantly, we have never played the night rules before. The glider rules are quite easy and you only have to do them at the beginning (and we still managed to make a mistake with them), but the night rules are much more comprehensive and dramatically change the way the game plays out. Not only is visibility limited, but units on the move might stray off course, get spooked and fire when they're not supposed to, or in the case of defenders, are not easy to get to move at all. Also, the rules concerning gunflashes, starshells and such are somewhat detailed. Still, we managed to play the scenario through in decent time and hopefully didn't make too many errors on the rules or learn them wrong.

We rifled through the Pegasus Bridge rules and the rulebook for information on where the wind was blowing at the start of the game but couldn't find it. We ended up randomizing the wind, which forced the British player to land his gliders much further away from the bridge than would have been the case historically. Later on we spotted the predesignated wind direction on a different scenario card than the one we played, but the damage was done. The British attack was delayed by about a turn because of this and made the scenario more difficult for him to win.

Here's the action. I've embedded the commentary in the images to make it clearer.

So, the British failed to take the bridge but then again, the Germans failed to retreat over it. We decided to have a go at playing a campaign game while we're at it and recorded all necessary stuff for later use. The situation as it stands is that the British player will receive some reinforcements in the next couple of games but the German player (me) will receive nothing until dawn. There's not quite a platoon of conscripts guarding the bridge from Cafe Gondree so it will be interesting to see if anyone is left alive after the next scenario. The Germans will get their payback come dawn though, I'm sure.

2013 painting summary

Ok, let´s take a look at my 2013 while the topic of the changing year is still fresh.

For last year's Kinkkucon I completed a small demo table for Rate of Fire along with some US paras. The table turned out nice, but I was too busy to paint the paras properly.

Spring was pretty quiet on the hobby front. I was busy at work and with out family moving to the countryside. I picked up the slack during summer when I arranged a Volley and Bayonet Gettysburg game and made a lot of sabot bases for the system.I also painted a big bunch of generals as I had to have every divisional commander present, as well as some odds and ends. I neglected to photograph these but I think we're talking somewhere near a hundred models. Let's say 100.

The game proved to be great for grand tactical action and I hope to play some more of it in 2014.

I started my ancient Greek project and finished a Hail Caesar division's worth.

I did a whole Epic Dark Angels army

Orcs orcs orcs orcs

The year was finished with some Germans.

So, the final tally for last year's painting:

28mm: 12 models
20mm: 31 inf / 2 vehicles / 1 gun
6mm: 449 inf / 30 vehicles.

Not terribly productive but it's ok. For 2014, I plan on finishing the Greeks and the Germans, do more of my retro orcs, paint a part of that Winter war lode I have and maybe an epic Chaos army. The chances of me not getting some new army might be slim though.